


Of Monsters and Men

by jane_dorne



Category: All For The Game - Nora Sakavic, Strange the Dreamer Series - Laini Taylor
Genre: Alternate Universe - Fantasy, Alternate Universe - No Exy (All For The Game), Crossovers & Fandom Fusions, F/F, F/M, I'll update the tags as I go, M/M, Multi, No knowledge of the books needed, Strange the Dreamer x All for the Game
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-11-01
Updated: 2020-11-29
Packaged: 2021-03-08 22:54:15
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death
Chapters: 6
Words: 13,017
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27324574
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/jane_dorne/pseuds/jane_dorne
Summary: After all those years on the run with his mother, Neil had never seen so much as the shadow of their so called pursuers. Sometimes he wondered if his mother had just been delusional. The stories about magic and alchemy, golden domes and running children in colourful feather capes, and women with long hair trailing on the lapis lazuli pavestones all seemed so much less real now that his mother wasn’t there to tell them anymore.Neil dreamed. He didn’t need to be asleep or even to close his eyes. He could picture it all so clearly, right there in the background of his mind and that sometimes felt more real than he was himself.The Cusp at his back, and further behind it, the city in all its mythical glory. An army of invaders in front of him. Tizerkane warriors with their legendary hreshteks in each hand at his side. Himself, standing tall and proud in their midst. The bite of the scorpion’s sting. The rush of the venom in his veins. His hearts pumping the newfound strength all throughout his body. The warriors gathering their breath before screaming their battle cries, opening their mouths in unison.The Strange the Dreamer x All for the Game crossover no one asked for
Relationships: Abby Winfield/David Wymack, Allison Reynolds/Renee Walker (All For The Game), Alvarez/Laila Dermott, Katelyn/Aaron Minyard, Kevin Day/Jean Moreau, Matt Boyd/Danielle "Dan" Wilds, Neil Josten/Andrew Minyard, Nicky Hemmick/Erik Klose, Seth Gordon/Allison Reynolds
Comments: 15
Kudos: 21





	1. Mysteries of Weep

**Author's Note:**

> Hello everyone!  
> I've been working on this fic for a few weeks already and psyched to finally post the first chapter!   
> I know this is an unconventional crossover but bear with me, it actually works pretty well.  
> Also, huge thanks to my beta @Spongecatdog for their help with my many grammatical errors (someday I'll understand how commas work) and their support  
> Hope you guys enjoy !
> 
> Warnings for this chapter : Child abuse (mentioned), bad parenting, delusions, panic attacks

Neil had already been in the small coastal town of Millport for almost a year, and he would have to move soon. He already should have. Staying in one place for so long certainly wasn’t safe. But after his mother’s death, Neil had found himself drifting and a bit lost, and Millport had at least provided some stability. He was also counting on the small town gossip to alert him of anyone suspect coming into town that might be after him.

After all those years on the run with his mother, Neil had never seen so much as the shadow of their so called pursuers. Sometimes he wondered if his mother had just been delusional. It seemed no one had even ever heard about the city she said he was born. The stories about magic and alchemy, golden domes and running children in colourful feather capes, and women with long hair trailing on the lapis lazuli pavestones all seemed so much less real now that his mother wasn’t there to tell them anymore.

After eighteen years, Neil would have stopped believing her altogether if it wasn’t for one thing. One mystery that he had witnessed himself. His mother had never explained  _ that _ to him.

Neil remembered that moment with a single minded clarity that is very rare of children’s memory. He had been 6 years old at the time. Neil recalled daydreaming about fierce Tizerkane warriors with scorpions in little cages attached to their belts whose venom gave the warriors superhuman strength. Had he been any other boy, Neil would have been playing. Maybe he’d have wielded apple boughs as pretend hreshteks in a small clearing and imagined fighting off an army of enemies. Maybe he would have yelled the name of his city before charging into battle.

But Neil was not any other boy. He was on the run, and his mother never left him out of her sight. She never let him do such foolish things as playing. So instead, Neil dreamed. He didn’t need to be asleep or even to close his eyes. He could picture it all so clearly, right there in the background of his mind and that sometimes felt more real than he was himself.

The Cusp at his back, a cliff made of the melted bones of monsters and further behind it, the city in all its mythical glory. An army of invaders in front of him. Tizerkane warriors with their legendary hreshteks in each hand at his side. Himself, standing tall and proud in their midst. The bite of the scorpion’s sting. The rush of the venom in his veins. His hearts pumping the newfound strength all throughout his body. The warriors gathering their breath before screaming their battle cries, opening their mouths in unison, and then-

_ ‘Weep’ _ screamed at the top of his imaginary lungs, tearing through his throat. But it felt wrong; it tasted like tears on his tongue. His dream screeching to a halt. Because, no, that was not the name of the city. This was not how the name was supposed to feel like. Neil remembered the taste of it so clearly: like calligraphy, if calligraphy was written in honey.

But each time Neil reached for the name of the city he was supposed to come from, only Weep came to mind. He had asked his mother then, panic in his voice and tears welling in his eyes. She looked at him like he was going crazy. She probably would have beaten him if they hadn’t been alone in the middle of nowhere in the Zosman countryside. But as it were, she answered.

‘It’s Weep, foolish boy, what is the matter with you?’ but then she’d frozen. Neil had seen the confusion on her face and known this was not what she had meant to say. The name had been stolen and only Weep remained.

But then his mother’s confusion had turned into fear and, later, anger.

She never told Neil any stories after that. Not once in fourteen years. She beat him anytime he tried to talk about the city. She told him to forget, to never say a word about it ever again. She told him it was dangerous, that it would get him killed.

She tried and tried to beat the memory and the stories out of his mind altogether. Neil always did what his mother ordered him. He trusted her to keep both of them safe. This one thing though, he was never able to give up. Nor did he wish to forget the tales. The stories were the only bright thing in his life, and if the price for that was to keep it a secret from his mother and everyone else, then so be it. Stories, about Weep and every other myth in Zosma, were the only thing keeping him sane or as sane as one could be given his circumstances.

Neil never forgot, and he never stopped wondering about the stolen name. It was magic. He was sure of it. What other explanation could there be? His hearts beat faster every time he thought about it. Magic was  _ real _ ! And someday, he was going to witness it again. Neil dreamed, and he dreamed of solving the mysteries of Weep and of magic. Someday, somehow, he would discover the truth. And in the meantime he would keep his head down, do as his mother said, and hoard stories like a dragon in its lair.

Right now though, Neil was the only person left in the small clerk office in Millport. His colleagues had left almost an hour ago. He was straining his eyes to finish up a translation work in the dim glave light. Night had fallen early in the late winter day, and the glave stone was of poor quality since the office did not have the means to purchase more expensive stones. The naturally glowing stones were not particularly rare or expensive to mine from the mountains in Maialen, but the truly exquisite ones had to be excavated from deep beneath ground level and were therefore reserved to the rich while the rest of the population bought cheaper ones that came from closer to the surface. To Neil, though, even this kind of low quality glave stone was a luxury; his mother had never wanted to spend the little money they had on something that she didn’t deem necessary. Night time was for sleeping, and you did not need light for that. If they were on the road, then fire was enough and had the advantage of doubling as a source of heat. If they were in more permanent situations, then glave stones were likely to be provided, and if they weren’t she did not see a need to have a source of light.

Someone cleared their throat from the doorway, and Neil startled, looking around frantically until he identified the source of the noise and was able to relax slightly. It was only the senior clerk, Mr. Hernandez. Neil had been so lost in his own thoughts he hadn’t heard the man come in at all.

“Sorry, kid,” he said. “I didn’t mean to startle you.”

“It’s fine, don’t worry about it. I thought everyone had left already is all.” Neil replied, smoothing out his features into a mask of polite indifference.

“So, uhm,” Hernandez cleared his throat. “I wanted to talk to you about something. You’ve been doing great work here, and we’ll be sad to see you go, but I know you plan to leave soon, and I’m not about to stop you. Now, I am under the impression that you don’t really have a goal in mind, so I took the liberty to bring up your name to someone. They’re here to see you about a job offer.”

Neil froze in his seat, breath hitching and throat closing up. He was supposed to keep a low profile and fade in the background, and now someone wanted to see him. People would remember him. Who would be interested in Neil, anyway? Could it be his pursuers, finally catching up to him after eighteen years? His legs itched to run, and his mind screamed at him to escape.

But there was no time. Already, a man emerged from behind Hernandez. He looked to be in his late thirties and tribal flame tattoos were revealed by his rolled up sleeves.

All the muscles in Neil’s body were taut, ready to spring into action the second the man did anything that appeared even slightly threatening. Neil wasn’t sure it would be enough though. Neil was fast, but this man moved like a predator, smooth and dangerous. Each gesture was deliberate and calculated. He had the kind of magnetic aura that made it hard to look away.

“David Wymack,” the man said, coming closer and extending a hand. He simply put it back in his pocket when he realized Neil wasn’t going to shake it. “Have you ever heard of Weep?”

Neil was too slow to hide his reaction. He recoiled at the name as if he’d been burned. The man –David- knew. How did he know? How had he found out about Neil? He’d always been so very careful to never mention the Unseen City, as he’d taken to calling it, unable to stomach the way Weep sounded on his tongue.

“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” Neil choked out, eyes wide and afraid. David was looking at him with a confused frown on his face and something else Neil couldn’t quite place.

“I’m the head of a delegation from the city; the first in almost 200 years. We’re looking for faranji - outsiders, to help us with a problem we cannot solve on our own. I can’t tell you what it is yet, or why we stopped exchanges with the outside world, but I promise to give you answers when we get to the city. What I can tell you though, is that there is no danger anymore. It is perfectly safe. And of course, whoever finds a solution to our problem will be bestowed with unimaginable riches in gratitude from my people.”

Neil stopped breathing entirely. Wymack had just given him proof the city wasn’t a mere figment of his mother’s imagination and offered him a chance to go there himself. A chance to pierce its mysteries or better yet, the promise of answers. He’d also said there was no danger anymore. But was he referring to the same danger his mother had? And could he trust the man’s word? But, he was also every one of Neil’s childhood reveries given flesh. A true Tizerkane warrior; because that was what David was, it was obvious to Neil even if he didn’t match the description in Neil’s mind perfectly.

“I thought outsiders were killed on sight if they reached the city. Faranji are not welcome, are they?” Neil asked, because this sounded too good to be true. He wanted it so much it hurt, and he couldn’t have it. He was being an idiot even continuing this conversation. He should have said no and walked away the second the man entered the room. And yet, Neil couldn’t bring himself to leave without hearing everything the Tizerkane had to say. Couldn’t stomach walking away from what surely was the only opportunity he would ever have to fulfil his dreams.

“So, you have heard about my city after all,” Wymack said with a contemplative look. “And you are right. Never in our history has a stranger walked through our doors and lived. But today, we are forced to make an exception for we cannot do this on our own.”

“But why would you want  _ me _ ?” Neil asked, desperation in his voice.

“With all the faranji we are collecting, we are bound to need a translator. Mr Hernandez here spoke highly of you. It’s very rare to find someone with your talents at such a young age. You are a convenient choice.”

“But I don’t speak your tongue,” Neil lied. Of course he did, but that was a well kept secret he was not about to disclose. Hopefully this would make Wymack relent, and he’d rescind his offer before Neil did something stupid and accepted it.

“No matter. I did not expect you to. Besides, you could learn on the way. We have months of travel ahead of us.”

Neil closed his eyes and thought about what his mother would do if she could see him right now. She’d beat him senseless for sure. But Neil couldn’t run anymore. He did not have the will to keep going without her for much longer. If he was going to die, it might as well be doing something for himself for the first time in his life. At least he would die for a reason, his hearts beating a chant of triumph and euphoria in his chest.

“Ok, I’ll come with you,” Neil said through his closing up throat. He felt like a weight had been lifted off of his chest and a noose passed around his neck at the same time. It was exhilarating.


	2. Beautiful and full of Monsters

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Neil, the desert and a bunch of new friends.

After months of travel, they were finally there. Wymack had said this would be their last night in the Elmutaleth, the desert that sprawled on and on between the Unseen City and the rest of the continent. The crossing had been gruelling, the expanse of sand seemingly infinite under the heavy glare of the sun. Neil would be glad to finally leave it behind.

In the distance, they could see the desert’s hard and final edge: the Cusp. Jagged and glittering, it was a long, low-slung formation of blinding white rock and a perfect natural battlement for that which lay beyond. Not yet visible and never before seen by faranji eyes, lay the city that had lost its name, and, within it, whatever problem the Godslayer sought help to solve.

For now though, he took his time brushing the desert dust out of his Lixxa’s silver fur. She was a spectral, legendary mounts of the Tizerkane, spectral were close in appearance to deer, with their long legs and tall antler. 

Then, he had to help set up camp. Assembling and tethering the tents to the ground was a terribly long process since some of the delegates refused to help in any kind of chore. These entitled assholes seemed to think such mundane tasks were below their station. That was the case of most of the scholars from Zosma who were used to having others do everyday tasks for them. One of them in particular, Allison Reynolds, Golden Goddaughter of the Queen of Zosma herself, had a tendency to grate on Neil’s nerves. The blonde was always looking down on the rest of the delegation, even her own countrymen, and thinking herself better and smarter than everyone else. All because she had revolutionized alchemy or something. She’d turned lead into gold, which, okay, that would have been pretty useful while on the run. Maybe. After all, Neil didn’t have a small castle as a laboratory at his disposition. And who knew how she’d even done it… Still, some modesty wouldn’t kill her.

But worse than Reynolds was Seth Gordon, who followed her around everywhere and attended to her every need. He was probably sleeping with her too, if the rumors around camp were to be believed. The guy was just a plain asshole who was only part of the delegation because of his expertise in explosives. He’d worked in a mine in Maialen, and his résumé included blowing off the sides of mountains. Not that anyone knew why that could be needed, of course.

The two made an unlikely pair: the alchemist and the explosionist. They had fallen into step back together in Alkonost and taken to riding and eating meals together. Their relationship was a mystery to Neil, alternating between looking lustily at each other to throwing insults in a second for no apparent reason.

Thankfully, there were, as they’d taken to calling themselves, the  _ good _ faranji. That group was composed of Neil, Matt and Dan, a married couple, he a biologist and her an engineer, who with their combined talents had managed to build some kind of aircrafts. The couple was very nice and friendly and had somehow adopted Neil without him noticing until it was too late. That seemed to happen a lot, lately. Then, there was Laila Dermott, the architect who had built the tallest structure on the continent, a tower called the Cloud Spire, destined to be the tomb of the current king of her kingdom. Renee had been recruited from the same city, because she had managed to  _ climb  _ said tower with nothing but her bare hands. She’d been thrown into jail for her troubles, but Neil had heard of her prowess and brought her to Wymack’s attention. The two women had not liked each other much at first, but the former’s bubbly personality and the latter’s infinite patience and serenity had allowed them to become friends in the months since they had joined the caravan, right before the crossing of the desert.

All the faranji had been expected to regroup in the last city before the desert, Alkonost, a few days before the date of the beginning of the crossing to give them time to prepare for the journey and gather the materials they would need; Neil, however, had been able to follow Wymack and the Tizerkane on their journey across the continent. Wymack pretended it was because his talents as a translator would be needed, but Neil didn’t believe him. Wymack seemed gruff on the outside, but he really had a heart of gold. He’d probably seen how desperate Neil was and realized if he didn’t take him with them that they’d never see him again. The fact that they all spoke Common Tongue only helped support that idea.

Neil had been skittish at first and done his best to be unnoticeable, but the group’s friendliness had worn him out eventually. Wymack and his second-in-command, Abby, were parental figures for everyone, the youngest Tizerkane in particular. They called him the Godslayer, a word they thought Neil couldn’t understand since they hadn’t taught it to him. Neil couldn’t figure out where the name came from though. From what his mother had taught him, the people of Unseen prayed to the Farers. The six seraphim with wings of smokeless fire led by Thakra. The rest of the world believed the seraphim to be mere myths whereas the people of Unseen had built temples in their honour. Neil hardly thought Wymack had killed seraphim. Maybe he was mistranslating the whole thing.

Abby was sweet but always sad; Neil often caught her gazing at Wymack like she was grieving him even though he was still very much alive. But then again, Wymack himself couldn’t seem to bring himself to look her in the eye. Whatever history existed between the two, it was nothing good.

Jeremy, Erik and Alvarez were the youngest of the Tizerkane, and they’d somehow adopted Neil into their group during the months of travel. Neil had spent most of his time evading their questions and lying to them, but they’d never stopped trying, and Neil had to admit he had come to view them as friends; the first ones he ever had. Every once in a while, he caught himself telling the truth without even thinking about it, and it sent him into a panic, but long term exposure to his new friends’ easy going personalities had allowed him to relax and realize that, maybe, he didn’t need to lie about everything. That it was okay to trust them with small bits and pieces of himself. It helped that they seemed to understand what these small truths meant to him and were always grateful for the scraps he offered them.

Neil was pried out of his thoughts by Dan coming up next to him.

“Hey, Neil. So. Renee’s closing the bets tonight; this is your last chance to weigh in.”

Before Neil could reply, Matt was coming up on his other side. “Oh, yeah man, you’ve been with them for months; you have to know  _ something _ !”

“Guys,” Renee chimed in. “If he doesn’t want to bet, we’re not going to make him,” she paused for a few seconds, tilting her head in consideration. “I would, however, like to know what you think. Everyone else’s bets are incredibly boring; but I have a feeling yours would be interesting. Beautiful and full of monsters. I have just enough room for one more.”

The other two grumbled a bit at that but were forced to agree. After all, her little bet-recording notebook was filled with theories about wars and natural disasters. This betting thing had been going on for the whole duration of the trip, and Renee’s little pearled purse was full to bursting with silver coins.

Neil hadn’t placed a bet so far, because he didn’t want to waste the money Wymack had been paying him for his services, used as he was to save the little money he had. But he supposed he could make an exception for once.

“Beautiful and full of monsters?” he asked.

“All the best stories are,” Renee replied with a knowing grin.

“Alright, then,” he said, to the cheer of his friends. “I’m going to tell you a story. Wildly improbable and entertaining.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you all for reading!  
> Next chapter we'll hear all about Neil's theory.


	3. The Oldest Story in the World

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> A very wild, very improbable theory stirs many reactions and starts fights. Plus some lore as an added bonus.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> What's that? An early update? Don't get used to it and enjoy!
> 
> Warnings for this chapter : Explicit language; mentions of the murder of an entire species; and I think that's it? Let me know if I missed anything.

Everyone gathered in around the fire, eager to hear Neil’s story. He cleared his throat and began.

“The seraphim are the oldest myth in the world, and can be found in every culture. They might be called enkyel or anjelin or angels, s’rith or serafain or seraphim, but the core story remains constant, and it is this : They were beings of surpassing beauty with wings of smokeless fire – six of them, three male, three female – and long, long ago, before time had a name, they came down from the skies. They came to look and see what manner of world it was, and they found rich soil and sweet seas and plants that dreamed they were birds and drifted up to the clouds on leaves like wings,” Neil said, his hearts beating faster at hearing his mother’s stories aloud for the first time in almost ten years.

“They also found the ijji, a huge and hideous race that kept humans as slaves, pets, or food, depending on the version of the tale. The seraphim took pity on the humans, and for them they slew the ijji, every one, and they piled the dead at the edge of the great dust sea and burned them on a pyre the size of a moon. And that, the story goes, is how man claimed ascendency over the world of Zeru, while the demons were stricken from it by the angels. So, here is my theory; highly improbable like requested many times. The problem,” Neil paused for effect, everyone hanging on his words, “is that the seraphim have returned.”

Scoffs sounded around but Neil ignored them, “Now, I’m sure all of you knew all that already. But do you know where they came to? They came  _ here _ . The great dust sea, it’s called in the tales. What else but the Elmutaleth? And the funeral pyre the size of a moon?” Neil pointed to the single feature in the great flat land.

“The Cusp?” Renee asked.

“Look at it. It’s not crystal, it’s not marble, and it’s definitely not ice.”

The sun had melted to a stripe of copper and the sky was deepening blue. The Cusp looked even more otherworldly than by daylight, aglow as though lit from within. “Then what is it?” Laila asked.

“The fused bones of slaughtered demons,” said Neil, just as his mother had once told him. “Thousands of them. The holy fire burned away their flesh, and whatever their bones were made of, it melted into glass. You can still see their skulls, all full of teeth, and make out their curved spines and long skeletal feet. Carrion birds nest in their great eye sockets. Nothing can survive there but eaters of the dead.”

“ _ Really _ ?” Matt asked, breathless and eyes wide.

Neil broke into a smile.  _ Extremely improbably _ , he was about to remind him, but someone else answered first.

“Of course not really,” said the voice, with a drawl of exaggerated patience. It was Allison Reynolds, the woman who had distilled azoth. She was leaning back against the windbreak, gilded by both sunset and firelight. “Your credulity is as vast as this desert. One might get lost in it and never encounter fact or reason.”

A couple of the others laughed with her, marvelling that anyone could believe such nonsense.

“Neil believes it too, don’t you Josten?” Allison added. “He believes in everything, even ghosts.”

“I admit I prefer an open mind to a closed one,” he said.

“You call it an open mind to believe men flew down from the skies on fiery wings?” Gordon interjected, tone disbelieving.

“And women,” said Neil. “It’s a woeful species that’s all male.”

“More like a nonexistent species,” remarked Laila. “Men lack both wombs and good sense.”

Everyone except Seth and the ‘bad’ faranji laughed.

“Pardon me,” cut in Reynolds. “You believe men  _ and women  _ flew down from the skies on fiery wings?”

Neil didn’t, not really. Seraphim were creatures he had heard about in his mother’s stories or other people’s from their travels; he simply thought it interesting how all the cultures in Zeru had an iteration of that same myth. He didn’t have any proof it was real. But then again, he hadn’t truly believed the Unseen City was real until Wymack had come knocking on his metaphorical door and when he’d felt the city’s name being plucked from his mind by means of magic.

“I see no harm in entertaining all ideas,” Renee chimed in. “For example, could you have arrived at azoth if you’d arbitrarily closed your mind to certain chemical compounds?”

Allison’s jaw clenched. When she spoke again, a tightness had replaced the mockery in her tone. “Alchemy is a science. There is no comparison.”

Neil smirked at her sharply and then turned back to Renee. “Now, where was I?”

She referred to her notebook, in which she had been recording his theory. “The fused bones of slaughtered demons,” she supplied.

“Right. So it was  _ here _ the seraphim came down – or more like  _ there _ , in the city.” He gestured toward the Cusp and beyond. “And there they slew the unwholesome ijji, leaving the young and attractive race of man and woman free of foes and went away again. Millennia passed. Humans thrived. And then one day, as prophesied... the seraphim returned.”

“Okay, but what,” Renee asked him, “is  _ the problem _ ?”

“I’m getting to it,” said Neil, though in truth he hadn’t quite figured out that part of his wild and improbable theory. He looked around. He saw that it wasn’t only the faranji paying attention, but the Unseen as well: the Tizerkane, the camel drovers, and old Rheman, the shaman. They couldn’t understand Common Tongue, but his voice naturally caught their ear. He did a quick translation for their benefit.

Wymack was listening with wry amusement, and Abby too, who was perhaps more to him than his second-in-command, though Neil couldn’t work out the nature of their relationship. The closeness between them was palpable but also somehow... painful. They didn’t share a tent, as several pairs of warriors did – as well as Laila and Alvarez, and though they showed no physical affection, it was clear to anyone with eyes that Abby loved Wymack. The Godslayer’s feelings were harder to interpret. For all his warmth, there was something guarded about him.

The two shared a history, but what kind?

In any case, this wasn’t Neil’s current puzzle.  _ The problem _ , he thought,  _ are the Seraphim and ijji. _

He caught sight of Mouzaive, the natural philosopher, standing over the cook, Madja, with his plate in his hand and a sour look on his face, and that was where his spark of inspiration came from.

“The Second Coming of the seraphim. It may have begun with awe and reverence, but what do you suppose?” he said, first in Common Tongue and then in Unseen. “It turns out they make  _ terrible _ guests. Extremely impressed with themselves. Never lift a finger. Except to be waited on hand and foot. They won’t even put up their own tents, if you can credit it, or help with the camels. They just... lurk about, waiting to be fed.”

Renee wrote, biting her lip to keep from laughing. Some of the Tizerkane did laugh as did Matt and Dan. They could laugh, because the criticism wasn’t aimed at them. Accustomed to farming the Thanagost badlands, they weren’t the sort to sit idle but helped out however they could. The same could not be said of the others, who were stiff with affront. “Is he suggesting we ought to perform  _ labor _ ?” asked Belabra, the mathematician, to a stir of astonished murmurs.

“In short,” Neil concluded, “the purpose of this delegation  _ is _ to persuade the seraphim to be on their way. Politely, of course. Failing that: forcible eviction.” He gestured to the delegates. “Explosions and catapults and so forth.”

Dan started clapping, so he bowed. Neil caught sight of Wymack again and saw his wry amusement had sharpened to a kind of keen appraisal. Abby was giving him the same frank look, which Neil met with an apologetic shrug. It was a ridiculous notion, as well as petty, but he hadn’t been able to resist. Neil was, after all, an instigator at heart despite his mother’s best attempt at beating it out of him.

Neil dug out his silver coin and handed it to Renee. She shoved it into the overstuffed purse. The seams strained. It appeared as though one more coin might split it wide open. The last page in the book, the last space in the purse, and the theory game was ended.

Neil looked to the Cusp, subtle in the starlight. The mysteries of Weep had been music to his blood for as long as he could remember. This time tomorrow, they would be mysteries no longer. He felt as though his whole life had led to this moment. His mother had tried so hard to keep him away, but the strings of fate had brought him back all the same. She had died for this and, in a way, it was her death that brought him here. Or maybe her own fate was always irrelevant and whatever Neil did, he would always end up here at the edge of the Elmuthaleth, at the edge of the world; back where it all began.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hope you liked this! I'm super exited for Sunday's chapter! We'll be meeting some new, super important characters and a whole new POV.


	4. Kissing Ghosts

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Monsters, magic and ghosts

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Yay! I finally get to introduce Andrew's POV! Hope you guys enjoy!
> 
> Warnings for this chapter: non-consensual kissing, mentions of child murder (just barely though)
> 
> I know the warnings make it sound dark but this actually a very light hearted chapter

“You  _ can _ kiss a ghost.”

“I suppose you’d know.”

“I do know. It’s just like kissing a person.”

“Now, that’s something you  _ wouldn’t _ know.”

Andrew lingered in the half-light of the gallery, listening to the rhythms of Aaron and Katelyn arguing. It never grew very heated between them, but neither did it ever quite abate. He knew that as soon as he stepped out into the garden they would stop speaking entirely and glance warily at him; he wasn’t in the mood for that. Andrew was tired. He was always tired. To be fair he never slept, so that was probably why. He didn’t like the loss of control; anything could happen while he was asleep. No, Andrew did not sleep; instead he sat very still in the heart of the Citadel and let his mind drift, untethered in a way akin to meditation. Those moments were the most rest he ever got and he was perfectly fine with that.

“I’ve kissed people,” said Katelyn. “I’ve kissed  _ you _ .”

“Pecks on the cheek don’t count,” replied Aaron.

Andrew could see the pair of them, shimmering in the late-day sun. Aaron had just turned eighteen, as had Andrew, and Katelyn would be sixteen in a few more months. Like Robin, Katelyn wore a silk slip that would have been considered an undergarment if there were anyone around to see her. Anyone  _ alive _ , that is. The same could be said of the boys who wore undershirts and pants. They were picking plums, their two sets of bare arms reaching in among the whiplike boughs. Their two heads turned away from him, one short and light blond, the other red and wild as wind. The wild one was Katelyn. She refused to wear her hair in braids and then acted as though she were dying when they tried to brush out the tangles.

She had been kissing ghosts. He sighed. It wasn’t a surprise exactly. Of the five of them, Katelyn was the most ardent and the most prone to boredom. “It’s easy for  _ you, _ ” she’d told Robin just the other evening. “You get to see people every night. You get to  _ live _ . The rest of us are just stuck in here with the ghosts.”

Andrew disagreed with that sentiment.  _ He _ was perfectly content with his ghosts. And certainly, what Robin did was not living. She was spying on the monsters that had slaughtered babies and would do the same to them if they were ever discovered. Robin herself would disagree, he knew, but for different reasons. Every night she bore witness to what she could never have. It wasn’t living. It was torture. A  _ necessary _ torture. She kept the fear of the Citadel alive in the humans’ hearts and minds. She was their way to protect themselves and prevent an attack. Andrew and his ghosts were the last line of defence if she failed. Robin didn’t know that, though, and neither did the others. They all thought Robin was their  _ only _ means of protection. They didn’t know about the army Andrew had gathered in the last ten years. An army of the dead was residing in the heart of the Citadel.

“Good, you’re here,” said Nicky, coming into the gallery. It was a long, vaulted arcade that overlooked the garden from the dexter arm of the citadel and was where dinner would soon be laid out for the five of them. Here, the slick blue mesarthium of which the entire citadel was constructed was softened almost to an afterthought by Aaron’s orchids. Hundreds of them, dozens of varieties, spiking, trailing, billowing, they dressed the colonnade in a forest of blooms. Vines wrapped the pillars and epiphytes clung to the ceiling like anemones or roosting butterflies. It was sumptuous, illusory. You could almost forget where you were. You could almost imagine yourself free and walking in the world.

Almost.

As for Nicky, he was Andrew’s fellow acting parent to the other three. He was seventeen years old, like Robin, and had, this year, fallen almost all the way over the line into adulthood. He was tall, still lean from his fast growth, and had begun to shave – or, as Aaron put it, to “abuse his poor face with knives.” It was true he hadn’t yet mastered the art, but he was getting better. Andrew saw no new wounds on him, only the healing pucker of an old one on the sharp edge of his jaw.

Andrew thought he looked tired. The others weren’t always easy to manage, and it mostly fell to Nicky to see that they did their chores and obeyed The Rule.

“Robin up yet?” Nicky asked.

“I haven’t seen her. Maybe she’s with Cass.”

Cass had run the citadel nursery before the Carnage. Now she ran everything. Well, everything that was still running, which wasn’t much.

“Ghost-kisser,” they heard from the garden. Aaron’s deep voice curled with laughter, and was cut off by an “Ow!” as Katelyn pelted him with a plum.

“Who was it?” Nicky asked Andrew. “Who did she aim her lips at?”

“Roland.”

“Roland? Really?” Nicky wrinkled his nose not because he found the idea disgusting, but because he had kissed that particular ghost too.

Roland had been with them since the beginning. He’d been a footman before the Carnage and still wore the livery he’d died in. He was the second soul Andrew had ever caught, right after Cass.

All of a sudden Katelyn’s voice grew louder. “Well, let’s see about it, shall we?” she said, followed shortly by a singsong call of, “Nicky, where are you?”

Nicky froze like prey in a raptor’s shadow. “Oh no,” he said.

Katelyn appeared in an arch of the arcade, looking like one more orchid in the forest, her slim form a stem upholding a bloom of riotous hair. Nicky tried to melt out of sight, but it was too late. She’d spotted him. “There you are. Oh, hello, Andrew. Nicky, I need you for a second.”

Aaron was right behind her. “You do  _ not _ need him,” he said. “Leave him alone!”

The chain of events that followed was a perfect illustration of the minor chaos that passed for life in the citadel.

Katelyn seized Nicky by his collar and yanked his face down to hers. He struggled. She held on, mashing her lips against his and doing something to his mouth that looked and sounded less like kissing than  _ devouring _ .

The temperature dropped. The air over their heads churned and darkened, a cloud coalescing out of nowhere, gray and dense and gravid with rain. Within a second, the gallery was full of the wild tang of ozone and a fullness of moisture that made them feel they were inside a storm even before the first drops burst forth, fat and full and very cold like the bottom dropping out of a bucket. Andrew felt the frigid spatter, but Katelyn was the target, and the girl was soaked in an instant.

Her gasp freed Nicky’s lips from suction. He wrenched himself away and staggered back, glaring and wiping his mouth, which was undevoured but glistening with spit. Katelyn tried to skitter clear of the cloud, but it pursued her.

“Nicky, call it off!” she cried, but he didn’t, so she charged straight toward him, cloud and all. He dodged and ducked behind Andrew into whom Katelyn caromed in a splash of sodden, icy silk.

Andrew didn’t gasp, but it was a close call. The rain was  _ arctic _ . “Nicky,” he said in his most stone cold voice. The cloud vanished as it had come, and Andrew pushed away from Katelyn, cold and streaming. Beneath their feet, the floor had become a wide, shallow lake. The orchids glistened, rivulets of rain streaming from their fleshy petals.

He was now very wet and glared at Nicky; everyone else eyeing him warily.

“Sorry,” Nicky said, looking at his feet like a child about to be grounded.

When they were little, they’d thought he  _ made _ the clouds, and why wouldn’t they? There was no one to explain it to them, or Andrew’s gift to him, or the other’s gifts to them. The gods had died and left them to their own devices.

Nicky wished, and clouds appeared. Even before he’d known to wish for them, they’d come, tied to his moods and terribly inconvenient, to hear Cass tell it. How many times had the nursery flooded because when this little boy was angry or excited, clouds filling the air around him? Now he could control it, more or less, and called them on purpose. Sometimes they were rain clouds, heavy and dark, and sometimes airy tufts of white that cast delicate shade and twisted into shapes like hunting ravids or castles in the air.

There was snow from time to time, always a treat, and hail, less of a treat, and sometimes sultry, muggy vapours that smelled of growth and decay. Occasionally, perilously, there was lightning. Andrew and Nicky were ten or eleven when a paper kite appeared with some fog, and they realized he didn’t  _ make _ the clouds. He ripped them out from faraway skies. He  _ stole _ them.

Cloud Thief, they called him now, and this was his part to play in keeping them alive. The river was out of their reach and rain was seasonal. Their only source of water for much of the year was Nicky’s clouds.

Katelyn’s riot of hair had gone otter-pelt sleek, still sluicing off the remnants of rain. Her white slip was plastered to her body and quite transparent, her small nipples and the divot of her navel plenty visible. She made no move to cover herself. Andrew and the two other boys averted their eyes.

Katelyn turned to Aaron and conceded with evident surprise, “You know, you’re right. It’s  _ not _ like kissing ghosts. It’s warmer. And... wetter.” She laughed and shook her head, fountaining spumes of rain from the ends of her hair. “A lot wetter.”

Aaron didn’t share her laughter. Stricken, Andrew’s twin brother spun on one bare heel and darted back out to the garden.

Katelyn turned to Andrew. “What’s wrong with  _ him _ ?” she asked, perfectly oblivious to what had been clear to Andrew for months now: Aaron’s affection for Katelyn had changed from the brotherly feeling they all had for him into something... well, to use Katelyn’s words... warmer. Andrew wasn’t going to explain it to Katelyn; he rarely got involved in his siblings shenanigans. It was just one of the ways life was getting more complicated as they grew up.

Andrew looked down at his wet shirt and pants and sighed. He’d have to change. “It’s almost dinnertime,” he said to Katelyn. “I suggest you get dry.”

Katelyn looked down at herself, then back up at Andrew. “All right,” she said, and Andrew saw the telltale spark in her eye.

Katelyn burst into flames. Andrew had to lurch back from the blast of heat as Katelyn was engulfed in a crackling, deep-orange column of fire. It kindled in an instant, like lamp oil kissed by a spark but died more slowly, the flames receding until her form was visible within them, her flesh absorbing each lick of fire one by one. Her eyes were the last reservoir of flame, burning as red as her hair so that she looked, for a second, like a temple icon to an evil goddess, and then she was just herself again – herself and  _ only _ herself, nary a shred or ashen tatter remaining of her dress.

They called her Bonfire, for obvious reasons. While a baby Nicky might have caused inconvenience, a baby Katelyn had had a more dangerous effect, compounded by the volatility of her nature. It was a good thing, then, that their nursemaid had been dead already. Ghosts were not combustible and neither was mesarthium, so there had been no risk of her setting the citadel alight.

“All dry,” said the girl, and so she was. Her hair, unburned, was wild once more, still crackling with the fire’s kinesis, and Andrew knew that if he touched it, it would feel like a bed of coals, and so would her bare skin. He shook his head, glad Aaron had missed this display. Andrew and Nicky were resolutely not looking any lower than her face.

Katelyn looked triumphant, standing there fire-dried, at ease with herself, and blue. Blue as opals, pale blue. Blue as cornflowers, or dragonfly wings, or a spring – not summer - sky. Just like the rest of them.

Blue as five murders waiting to happen.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you for reading!
> 
> Next week: Soup


	6. Purgatory Soup

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Five blue abominations

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hello again!  
> Have a good read!
> 
> Warnings for this chapter: mentions of violence, mentions of murder and blood and all that (one of the characters remembering the violence, it doesn't happen in real time), mentions of nightmares, racism I guess (blue skin)

Andrew took off his clammy, wet shirt and stepped out of his equally wet pants and let both items fall to the floor of his dressing room. Gray silk puddled on the blue metal floor. Blue toes, blue legs, blue self reflected in the blue mirror, which wasn’t glass but only more mesarthium polished to a high gloss. The only thing that wasn’t blue was his hair – which was a light blond – and the honey gold of his hazel eyes. The white of his teeth, too, if he were smiling, but he very much wasn’t. Andrew never smiled.

Andrew regarded the row of shirts hanging from the slim mesarthium dowel. There were so many and all so fine. And yes, they were underclothes, but he and the others preferred them to the alternative.

The only clothes they had or would ever have – like the only life they had or would ever have – was what the citadel provided, and the citadel provided the garments of dead gods and goddesses.

The dressing room was as large as a lounge. There were dozens of garments, all of them too grand to wear and too terrible. Satins and foils and stiff brocades, encrusted with jewels and trimmed in furs with the heads still on, glassy eyes, bared fangs and all. There was a jacket made of hundreds of doves’ wings all stitched together. There was one of pure molded gold, made to look like a beetle’s carapace, and a fan collar fashioned from the spines of poisonous fish, with tiny teeth sewn in patters like seed pearls. There were ties and belts, shirts with daggers concealed in the sleeves, elaborate capes, and tall boots carved of ebony and coral. Everything was gaudy and heavy and cruel. To Andrew, they were clothes a monster might wear if it were trying to pass as human.

Which was near enough the truth. The monster had been Nathan, god of beasts and king of gods.

Nathan hadn’t been his father, but Katelyn’s. He was the one that claimed his chambers, because they were of no use to her, who had settled in Lola’s instead.

Andrew had thousands of memories of Nathan, but none of them were his own. Nathan did not bother himself with such lowly tasks as visiting the nursery. That had been Lola’s mission.

That was before it happened of course.  _ It _ . The Carnage. Knifeshine and spreading blood. Clammy little hands slipping away, babies wailing in fear. The end of one world and start of another. His memories of the gods were all secondhand, borrowed from the minds of dead humans. In some they were alive, in others dead.

Andrew focused on the underclothes. He had to get dressed. White silk or scarlet or black trimmed in burgundy. Gold or chartreuse or pink as the dawn sky. Andrew saw in the row of silk garments two possible endings:

In one, he was murdered, and they went unworn. Humans burned or shredded them, and they burned and shredded him too. In the other, he lived and spent years working his way through them all. Ghosts laundered them and hung them back up, again and again over years, and he wore them out one by one and eventually grew old in them.

It seemed so far-fetched – the idea of growing old. When Andrew thought of the future, all he could see was blood. His own, his family’s, the human’s. The dead chanted a chorus of death and destruction at the back of his mind. He never stopped hearing the hate and venom in their voices. He felt everything they felt, and it was never good. Hate was the only thing humans knew how to do and in return, it was all Andrew could feel. A dark, burning rage towards the monsters that had killed babies and children.

Andrew did not resent them for killing the gods. He knew they were monsters too. He remembered the dread of Lola coming to the nursery. The fear of being taken, never to be seen again. The goddess of despair came, and she took the children whose power had shown itself. He remembered the older children disappearing one by one. First Jean, then Kevin. Andrew had known he and Aaron would be next. He could feel the pull of his gift, and he resisted as hard as he could. But, eventually, he would have gone too.

So, no; Andrew did not blame the humans for killing the monsters that paraded as gods. What he could not forgive, what burned a hole through his chest, was celebrating the monsters who had slaughtered innocent children as a hero. The Godslayer they called him. David Wymack. He was the monster that haunted Andrew’s waking nightmares. The man who silenced weeping children in their cradles. The children Andrew didn’t save. Four. That had been all he could manage. Two squirming babies tight against his chest; two toddlers’ hand in his own. Katelyn and Robin; Aaron and Nicky. All of them, trying to escape his grip. They were afraid, and Andrew had to hold their clammy, slippery hands so hard they cried. He had wanted to come back for more. But he’d stood frozen in the hallway, free of his burden, listening to the cries silenced one by one by the slash of a sword. He had been too late.

He had been too late to catch the god’s souls as well. What he could have done with six gods in his power. He would have burned Weep to the ground for what the humans did. Maybe the whole world as he could not believe humans elsewhere would welcome blue skinned children with magic at their fingertips. Humans were afraid of power, and what they feared, they destroyed. That was a lesson Andrew had learned the hard way.

Andrew dragged himself forcefully out of his spiralling thoughts and chose black to suit his mood and returned to the gallery for dinner. Katelyn had come back from her own dressing room clad in a slip so sheer she might as well have stayed naked. She was making tiny flames off her fingertips while Nicky leaned over his big book of symbols, ignoring him.

“Aaron and Robin?” Andrew asked them.

“Aaron’s still in the garden, pouting about something,” said Katelyn, her self-absorption apparently admitting no hint as to what that something might be. “Robin is with him.”

“I’ll fetch them,” he said.

The garden was a broad terrace that stretched the breadth of the citadel, abutting the high, indomitable body of the structure on one side and falling away to a sheer drop on the other, edged only by a hip-high balustrade. It had been formal once but now was wild. Shrubs that had been tidy topiaries had grown into great shaggy trees, and bowers of blooming vines had overspilled their neat beds to riot up the walls and columns and drape over the railing. Nature flourished, but not on its own. It couldn’t, not in this unnatural place. It was Aaron who made it flourish.

Andrew found him gathering anadne blossoms. Anadne was the sacred flower of Lola, goddess of oblivion. Distilled, it made lull, the draught Robin drank to keep from dreaming.

“Thank you for doing that,” Robin said, who was watching Aaron work.

He looked up and smiled at her. “Oh, I don’t mind. Cass said it was time for a new batch.” He dropped a handful of flowers into his bowl and dusted off his palm. “I just wish you didn’t need it, Robin. I wish you were free to dream.”

Robin looked sad when she answered, “I might not have my own dreams,” she said, as though it scarcely mattered, “but I have everyone else’s.”

“It’s not the same. That’s like reading a thousand diaries instead of writing your own.”

“A thousand?” said Robin. “More like a hundred thousand,” which was close to the population of Weep.

“So many,” said Aaron, marvelling. “How do you keep them straight?”

Robin shrugged. “I don’t know that I do, but you can learn a lot in four thousand nights.”

“I was just thinking,” said Aaron, “how our waking life is like the citadel. Enclosed, I mean. Indoors, no sky. But dreaming is like a garden. You can step out of prison and feel the sky around you. In a dream you can be free. You deserve to have that too, Robin.”

“If the citadel is our prison,” Robin replied, “it’s our sanctuary, too.” She plucked a white blossom from its stem and dropped it into Aaron’s bowl. “It’s the same with lull. Besides, my dreams wouldn’t be anything like a garden.”

“Dinner,” Andrew interrupted them before Aaron could reply.

They both looked up at him and together they went inside.

“Good evening, brood,” Cass greeted them, carrying a tureen from the kitchen.

Katelyn breathed a woeful sigh as her dinner was put before her. “Kimril soup. Again.” She scooped up a spoonful and let it dribble back into her bowl. It was beige, with the consistency of stagnant water. “You know what this is? It’s  _ purgatory soup _ .” Turning to Aaron, she asked, “Couldn’t you grow something  _ new _ for us to eat?”

“Certainly I could,” Aaron replied, “if my gift were conjuring seed from thin air.” He took a sip from his spoon. “Which it isn’t.”

Aaron might make things grow, but he had to have something to start with. For the most part, the citadel gardens had been ornamental – full of exotic flowers, like the orchids from which Aaron had gotten his nickname of Orchid Witch, with little in the way of edibles. It was their good luck that some long-ago gardener had made a small kitchen garden of herbs, fresh greens, and a few vegetables, and their  _ very _ good luck that that garden had included a few tubers of kimril, else they’d have starved long ago. Kimril was easy to grow, nourishing though nearly flavourless, and was now the staple of their boring diet.

Aaron grew their food. Nicky kept the rain barrels filled. Katelyn did her part, too. There was no fuel to burn, so  _ she _ burned. She made the fires that cooked their meals and heated their baths, and Andrew, well, he was responsible for the ghosts, who did most of the work. Robin was the only one who had no part in the mundane tasks of their days.

Purgatory soup, Andrew thought, stirring his with his spoon. The simplest possible fare served on the finest porcelain and set on an elaborate charger of chased silver. His goblet was chased silver, too, in a design of twined myrantine branches. Once upon a time, the gods had drunk wine from it. Now there was only rainwater.

Once upon a time, there had  _ been _ gods. Now there were only children going about in their dead parents’ undergarments.

“I can’t do it anymore,” said Katelyn, dropping her spoon into her soup. It splattered the table and the front of her new slip. “I can’t put one more bite of this insipid mush into my mouth.”

“Must you be so dramatic?” Nicky asked, bypassing his spoon in favour of tipping back his bowl and drinking from it. “It’s not as though it’s terrible. At least we still have some salt in the pantry. Imagine when that runs out.”

“I didn’t say it was terrible,” said Katelyn. “If it was terrible, it wouldn’t be  _ purgatory _ soup, would it? It would be  _ hell _ soup. Which would have to be more interesting.”

“Mm-hm,” agreed Aaron. “In the same way that being eternally tortured by demons is more ‘interesting’ than  _ not _ being eternally tortured by demons.”

They had an ongoing debate on the merits of “interesting”. Katelyn contented that it was always worth it, even if it came with danger and ended in doom. If Andrew had to weigh in, which he never would, he’d have to disagree with her. He’d take bland and monotone any day compared to the riot of hate living in his own mind.

“Purgatory’s more than just not being tortured,” Katelyn argued now. “It’s not being  _ anything, ever _ . You might not be tortured, but you’ll also never be  _ touched _ .”

“Touched?” Aaron’s eyebrows went up. “How did we get to touching?”

“Don’t you want to be touched?” Katelyn’s blue eyes glimmered, and the corners of her lips curled up, feline. There was such longing in her words, such hunger. “Don’t you wish you had someone to sneak off and  _ do things with _ ?”

Aaron flushed at this, a roseate warmth creeping into the blue of his cheeks and giving them a violet cast. He looked at his soup sullenly.

“Don’t get any ideas,” Nicky told Katelyn, flat. “You’ve debauched me enough for one day.” Which was rich coming from him, Andrew thought. He probably wouldn’t be protesting so much if Katelyn were a pretty boy instead of a pretty girl.

Katelyn rolled her eyes. “Please. That’s an experiment I won’t be repeating. You’re a terrible kisser.”

“ _ Me _ ?” he demanded. “That was all you! I didn’t even  _ do _ anything-“

“That’s why it was terrible! You’re  _ supposed _ to do something! It’s not facial paralysis. It’s  _ kissing _ -“

“More like  _ drowning _ . I never knew one person could produce so much saliva-“

“My darlings, my vipers,” came the soothing voice of Cass, floating into the room. Her voice floated and floated after it. She didn’t touch the floor. She didn’t bother with the illusion of walking. Cass, more than any other ghost, had shed all pretense of mortality.

Ghosts were not bound by the same laws as the living. If they appeared exactly as they had in life, it was because they chose to, either out of believing themselves perfect as is, or from fear of losing their last touchstone to reality in the form of their own familiar face, or because it didn’t occur to them to change. That was relatively rare, though. Most of them, given time, made at least small adjustments to their phantom forms. If Andrew allowed them to, of course.

But it was Cass who was the true master of the postmortal state. Her imagination was an instrument of wonder, and she fashioned, of the stuff of her ghostliness, an ever-shifting expression of her marvellous self.

This evening she wore a bird’s nest for a crown, and an elegant green bird was perched in it, singing. It was only an illusion, but a perfect illusion. Her face was more or less her own: a matron’s face, cheeks high, red, and round – “happiness cheeks,” she called them – but in place of her dark hair were leaves, streaming behind her as though caught in a breeze. She set a basket of biscuits on the table. Kimril-flour biscuits, as bland as the soup. “No more of your sniping and snarling,” she said. “What’s this about kissing?”

“Oh, nothing,” said Nicky. “Katelyn tried to drown me in saliva, that’s all. Come to think of it, has anyone seen Roland lately? He’s not dead in a puddle of drool somewhere, is he?”

“Well, he’s definitely dead,” remarked Robin. “I couldn’t say about the drool.”

“He’s probably hiding,” said Aaron. “Or maybe he pleaded Andrew to release him from his torment.”

Katelyn was unfazed. “Say what you like. He loved it. I bet he’s writing a poem about it.”

Robin let out a muffled snort at the idea of Roland writing a poem. Cass sighed. “Those lips will lead you into trouble, my pretty flame.”

“I  _ hope _ so.”

Andrew was distracted from the conversation by the pulling feeling that meant a soul was passing the citadel on its way to evanescence. After death, souls were invisible, incorporeal, and ephemeral, lasting a few days at the most between death and evanescence, during which time they could only cling to their bodies or drift helplessly upward toward their final unmaking – unless, that is, Andrew caught and kept them. They were made solid by his binding – substance and matter, if not flesh and blood. They had hands to work with, mouths to kiss with. They could speak, dance, love, hate, cook, teach, tickle, and even rock babies to sleep at night, but only if Andrew let them. They were his to control.

Andrew stretched his power to meet the soul, grabbing its gossamer threads and holding it tight in his mind's fist. Hundreds of shimmering threads pulsing with feeling. This ghost's emotions and thoughts hit him like a punch in the gut as new souls always did. The ghost appeared a few meters away from Andrew, posture rigid and face blank with shock.

This one was a man. He still wore the semblance of his worldly body.

“Tell us your name,” Andrew commanded the ghost, and everyone else startled and looked behind Andrew, who had turned in his seat to look at his new ghost.

He gritted his teeth, choking to keep his name to himself. He held out for four or five seconds and looked exhausted but determined. He didn’t understand that Andrew was toying with him. He was leaving him just enough will to believe he stood a chance against him. It was cruel, maybe. Like opening a birdcage to let the bird fly out whilst it’s tethered by the leg, and freedom is only an illusion. The ghost wasn’t the target of Andrew’s demonstration though; he was merely a means to an end. The others needed reminding of what, exactly, humans were capable of. This one would kill him if he could and the others, too. If he were alive, he would rip them apart with his bare hands.

Finally, Andrew tore his name from his lips. “Luther!” he gasped.

“You’re young,” said Katelyn, who was fixed on him with uncommon interest. “How did you die? Did someone kill you?” she asked, in much the same tone as if she were inquiring after his health.

He stared at them in raw horror, his eyes skipping from Katelyn to Nicky to Aaron to Robin, trying to process the sight of their blue flesh.

_ Blue _ . As blue as tyranny and thrall and monsters in the streets. He saw and felt it dawn on him:  _ what  _ they were.

“Godspawn,” he whispered, and Andrew felt his revulsion like a tidal wave, giving him nausea. The newly dead always felt so strongly. He knew the others could see it too as though it were given substance by Andrew’s binding. The air felt slippery with it. Rank.

Luther shook his head and squeezed his eyes shut as though he could deny their existence. It served as an affirmation, if nothing else. Every new ghost who recoiled from them in shock proved that they had not yet broken The Rule.

The Rule, the one and only. Self-imposed, it contained, in its simplicity, countless forbiddens. If they lived a thousand years, they’d still be discovering new things they mustn’t do.

_ No evidence of life _ .

That was it: the four-word mantra that governed their existence. They must betray  _ no evidence of life _ . At all costs, the citadel must appear abandoned. They must remain hidden and give the humans no hint that they were here, or that, unthinkably, five abominations had survived the Carnage and eked out an existence here for ten years.

In this ghost’s reaction, they saw that all was well. They were still a secret: the fruits of slaughter, slipped through bloody fingers. “You’re dead,” he said, almost pleading for it to be true. “We killed you.”

Andrew gave the ghost’s invisible leash a tug that felled him to his knees. “We’re not dead,” he said. “But  _ you _ are.”

He must have known already, but the plain words were a sucker punch. He looked around, taking it all in: this place that he only knew from his worst nightmares. “Is this hell?” he asked, hoarse.

Katelyn laughed. “I  _ wish _ ,” she said. “Welcome to purgatory. Care for some soup?”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hope you enjoyed! Have a nice day, stranger!
> 
> Next week: Moths and childhood memories


	7. The Fused Bones of Slaughtered Demons

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> A bet gets settled

For all his fanciful storytelling and talk of open minds, what had Neil really expected to find as the caravan approached the Cusp? A fissured cliff face of wheather-riven marble? Rock that looked enough like bones to spawn a myth with a boulder here and there in the rough shape of a skull?

That was not what he found.

“They’re really bones,” he said to Wymack and tried to read confirmation in the hero’s expression, but Wymack only gave a ghost of a smile and maintained the silence that he’d carried with him all day.

“They’re really bones,” Neil said again, faintly, to himself. That, over there. That wasn’t a boulder that looked like a skull. It  _ was _ a skull, and there were hundreds of them. No, there had to be thousands in all this vast white mass, of which hundreds were visible just from the track. Teeth in the jaws, sharp as any hreshtek, and, in the great eye sockets, just as he had said: carrion bird nests. They were strange and shaggy affairs, woven out of stolen things – dropped ribbons and hanks of hair, fringe torn off shawls and even shed feathers. The birds themselves swooped and cried, weaving in and out of immense, curved ridges that could only be spines, segmented and spurred, and unmistakably: giant hands, giant feet. Tapering carpals as long as a man’s arm. Knucklebones like fists. They were melted, they were fused. The skulls were warped, like candles left too near the fire, so that none held the same shape. But they held shape enough. These had been living creatures once.

Though not generally given to gloating, he would have liked to see the other faranji’s faces just now, Allison’s and Seth’s in particular. But they were stuck on camels, farther back in the caravan, and Neil had to be content with echoing exclamations from Matt, who  _ was _ given to gloating.

“Hey, Reynolds, am I really seeing this?” he heard him call. “Or am I lost in my  _ vast credulity _ ?” An, a moment later: “What are  _ you _ doing here, Reynolds? Don’t you know it’s rude to wander about in someone else’s credulity?” And then: “Is this fact or reason I’m encountering? Wait, no, it’s more demon bones.”

Neil suspected Matt wouldn’t soon tire of the joke.

“You’re surprised,” Wymack remarked to Neil. “The way you talked last night, I thought you knew.”

“Knew? No, I thought... I don’t know what I thought. I thought that even if it were true, it wouldn’t be so  _ obviously _ true.”

It was strikingly obvious and somehow too big to fit into his mind – like trying to cram the actual Cusp into his own small skull. It wasn’t every day you got proof of myth, but if this wasn’t proof, then he didn’t know what was. This also meant his mother hadn’t been crazy – not entirely at least. She hadn’t lied and made everything up. The implications of that were... too intricate to think about right then. “The seraphim?” he asked Wymack. “Were they real, too?”

“Is there proof, do you mean?” Wymack asked. “Nothing like this. But then, they didn’t die here, so they couldn’t have left bones. The Thakranaxet has always been proof enough for us.”

The Thakranaxet was the epic of the seraphim. Neil had heard a few passages from his mother, though she didn’t know the poem in its entirety. Hearing the reverence of Wymack’s tone, he understood that it was a holy text. “You worship them.”

“We do.” 

“I hope I didn’t offend you with my theory.”

“Not at all,” said Wymack. “I enjoyed it.”

They continued riding. Dazzled, Neil took in the extraordinary formations around him. “That one was a juvenile,” he said, pointing to a skull smaller than the rest. “That’s a baby demon skull. And this is a mountain of melted demon bones. And I’m riding over it on a spectral.” He stroked Lixxa’s long white ears, and she whickered, and he murmured sweet things to her before continuing. “I am riding over the funeral pyre of the ijji with the Godslayer.”

Wymack’s ghost of a smile became somewhat less ghostly. “Are you narrating?” he asked, amused.

“I should be,” Neil said, and began to, in a dramatic voice. “The Cusp, which had looked low on the horizon, was formidable at close range, and it took the caravan several hours to climb the switchback track to fort Misrach. It was the only way through. It was also the place where, for centuries, faranji had been drawn and quartered and fed to the sirrahs. Neil looked to the sky” – here Neil paused to look at the sky – “where the foul birds circled, screeching and crying and all but tying dinner napkins around their foul, sloped throats. And he wondered, with a frisson of concern: Was it possible he’d been brought so far just to serve as food for the carrion-eaters?”

Wymack laughed, and Neil counted it a small victory. A kind of grimness had been growing on the Godslayer the nearer they drew to their destination. Neil couldn’t understand it. Shouldn’t he be eager to get home?

“A  _ frisson of concern _ ?” repeated Wymack, cocking an eyebrow.

Neil gestured to the birds. “They are ominously glad to see us.”

“I suppose I might as well tell you. Due to a shortfall in faranji adventurers, the sirrahs were becoming malnourished. It was deemed necessary to lure some travellers here to make up the lack. After all, the birds must eat.”

“Damn. If only you’d told me sooner, I’d have put it in Renee’s book. Then I could have used the prize money to bribe the executioners.”

“Too late now,” said Wymack with regret. “We’re here.”

And here, indeed, they were. The fortress gates loomed before them. Helmed Tizerkane drew them open, welcoming their leader and comrades home with solemn gladness. Neil, they regarded with curiosity, and the rest of the strangers as well once their camels had been brought through the gates into the central plaza of the fortress. It was sliced right into the rock – or rather, into the melted, heat-rendered bones – which rose in high walls on either side, keeping the sky at a distance. Barracks and stables lined the walls, and there were troughs and a fountain – the first unrationed water they had seen for two months. Dead ahead at some twenty meters was another gate. The way through, Neil thought, and he almost couldn’t process it.

“The moment you see the city,” Wymack had said to the gathered faranji in Alkhonost, “you will understand what this is about.”

What could it be, that would be clear at a glance?

He dismounted and led Lixxa to a trough, then turned to the fountain and scooped water over his head with both hands. The feel of it, cold and sharp, soaking to his scalp and rushing down his neck, was unimaginably good. The next scoop was for drinking, and the next, and the next. After that: scrubbing his face, digging his fingertips into his overgrown auburn curls. Now that they had nearly arrived, he allowed himself a brief daydream of comfort. Not luxury, which was beyond his ken, but simple comfort: a wash, a meal, a bed.

“Neil!” cried Matt, springing toward him. His eyes were alight as he grabbed Neil’s shoulders with both hands and shook him. Neil’s feet almost left the floor at the giant’s assault. “ _ Bones _ , Neil!”

“Isn’t it ghoulish?” Dan interjected. Her tone made clear that she meant  _ good _ -ghoulish, if there were such a thing. Neil didn’t think there was. However you looked at it – whatever the ijji had been, and whatever had killed them, angels or not – this mound of bones was an epic mass grave. But there would be time for pondering the implications later. For now, he allowed himself to wonder.

There was a small meal waiting for them – simple fare but exquisite for being fresh. Soft, salty bread and white cheese, slices of spiced meat, and quarters of some big, globed fruit that tasted of sugared rain. No one spoke, and there were, for the moment, no divisions among them – rich or poor, outsider or native, scholar or secretary.

“Hey, Reynolds,” said Matt, around a mouthful of bread. “Are we still in my credulity? Because if we are, you owe me for this meal.”

Okay, maybe  _ some _ divisions persisted. The sirrahs continued to circle, squalling their ravenous chorus, and their ranks were disrupted once more, as they had been yesterday, by the passage of a message falcon. Half their size, it dove through the scribble of their ragged, stinking wings, driving them back with a piercing cry. Wymack held up his arm, and the bird spiralled an elegant descent, luffed into the wind, and landed.

The Godslayer retrieved the message and read it, and when he looked up from the page, he sought out Neil, first with his eyes, then with his feet.

“News?” asked Neil as he approached.

“What, this?” He held up the message. “More like orders.”

“Orders?” From whom? A commander? A governor? “I thought _ you _ gave the orders.”

Wymack laughed. “Not to my mother,” he said.

Neil blinked. Of every improbability packed into that moment, this struck him the most forcefully. He had crossed the Elmuthaleth at the Godslayer’s side and had just seen proof of the world’s oldest myth. But myth was the ordinary terrain of his mind, whereas it had never occurred to him that the Godslayer might have a mother.

Because he was a hero. Because he seemed cast from bronze, not born like a mortal man. Because mothers, in his mind, were fearful creatures with a bruising grip. It hardly seemed possible, but there it was.

“She’s looking forward to meeting you,” said Wymack.

Neil looked at him, blank. “Me,” he said. “But how could she know...?” He trailed off, a lump forming in his throat. The Godslayer had a mother waiting for him in Weep. He had sent her word of his imminent arrival, and in his note he had seen fit to mention Neil.

“You’ll stay with her when you reach the city.”

“Oh,” said Neil, surprised and a little apprehensive. The faranji were to be hosted at the Merchants’ Guildhall; he had assumed he would be, too.

“She insists, I’m afraid. I hope you don’t mind. It won’t be as grand as the guild. Comfortable, though.” And Neil hardly knew what was more extraordinary: that Wymack was subject to his mother’s insistence, or that he imagined Neil would mind. It was obvious his mother was not of the same kind Neil’s had been.

“No,” he said. “Comfortable is good.” Those were the words his mind served up to him.  _ Comfortable is good _ . “Wait.” Wymack’s word choice struck him. “You said when  _ I _ reach the city. Aren’t you coming?”

“Not tonight.”

“What? Why?”

Wymack looked weary. The vitality that usually radiated from him was all but gone. Averting his eyes as though ashamed, he said, “I don’t sleep well in Weep.”

It was only the second time Neil had heard him use that name, and it chilled him.

“So you see,” said Wymack, trying to smile, “I’m offering you up to my mother as proxy. I hope you can endure a fuss. She’s had no one to look after for some time, so I expect she’ll make the most of it.”

“It will be the first fuss I have ever endured,” said Neil, hearing something raw in his voice that could not be put down to a dry throat. “But I imagine I’ll do all right.”

The Godslayer smiled, eyes warm and crinkling, and reached out to thump him on the shoulder. And Neil, who lacked not only a mother but a father, too, thought that having one might feel something like this.

“Well then,” said the great man. “Here we are.” He looked across to the far gate and seemed to steel himself. “Are you ready?”

Neil nodded.

“Then let’s go.”

Wymack led the party to the far gate. He didn’t go through it, but turned his spectral around to face them. He didn’t speak at once. There was a weight to his silence. There was tension and resignation in his face, even a hint of dread.

“Two hundred years ago, there was a storm.” He paused. They all hung on the word  _ storm _ . The twin metallurgists exchanged a hopeful glance, because one of their theories had involved a hurricane.

“It wasn’t like other storms,” Wymack continued. “There was no rain, only wind and lightning, and the lightning was like nothing that had come before. It was directly above the city, furious. It formed a  _ sphere _ ... as though some great hands had skimmed the sky and gathered a world’s worth of lightning into a ball.” He acted this out, his great shoulders bunching as his hands dragged the spectre of lightning shaped it and held it.

“It stopped.” He dropped his hands. “The night fell dark. There was no moon, no stars. The people could see nothing, but they felt a change in the atmosphere, a pressure. And when the sun rose, they saw why. As you will see.”

And with that, he turned his mount and led them through the gate. The path was carved deep through the demonglass, and narrow, so that they had to go in single file. It curved and rose, gradually widening. Onward and upward they rode. The sky grew larger, a deep and cloudless blue.

And then, quite suddenly, they came to an edge, and it was all before them. The Elmuthaleth had been a high desert plateau, flat and sere. On this side of the Cusp, the world fell away into a deep canyon. It was long and curving, carved by a river – such a river made the Eder look like a dribble, its catastrophic rush audible even from here. But no amazement could be spared for a river, no matter how epic. There just wasn’t enough amazement in the world.

“The shadow of our dark time still haunts us,” the Godslayer had said. And Neil had fixed on  _ dark time _ , and he had wondered at the word  _ haunts _ , but he had never thought to consider  _ shadow _ .

It was a literal shadow.

There was the city – fabled Weep, unseen no longer – and the day was bright, but it lay dark.

Neil felt as though the top of his head were open and the universe had dropped a lit match in. He understood in that moment that he was smaller than he had ever known, and the realm of the unknowable was bigger. So much bigger. Because there could be no question:

That which cast Weep in shadow was not of this world.

“Neil,” Renee said. She weighed the theory purse on her palm and said in a bright, stunned whisper, “I think you win.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you for reading! Hope you enjoyed!  
> Next week : Luther reveals some worrying information

**Author's Note:**

> See you guys next Sunday for the second chapter where we get to meet a whole bunch of new characters!


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